Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[mwillems]

One piece of kit I can personally recommend for this kind of application is the HiFiberry amp+ hat for the pi.  It's both a DAC and an integrated 25 watt *stereo* class D amplifier.  You need a good power supply to get good results out of them, but I've been running two of these on top of raspberry pis to power various sets of speakers around my house.  It's tiny and sounds pretty good.

The stereo amp offers some neat options if you wanted to give a mono speaker an active crossover, or you could use one for a pair of conventional speakers and run a wire, etc.

https://www.hifiberry.com/products/ampplus/

[bob]

One piece of kit I can personally recommend for this kind of application is the HiFiberry amp+ hat for the pi.  It's both a DAC and an integrated 25 watt *stereo* class D amplifier.  You need a good power supply to get good results out of them, but I've been running two of these on top of raspberry pis to power various sets of speakers around my house.  It's tiny and sounds pretty good.

The stereo amp offers some neat options if you wanted to give a mono speaker an active crossover, or you could use one for a pair of conventional speakers and run a wire, etc.

https://www.hifiberry.com/products/ampplus/

That looks pretty cool.
The HiFiBerry Dac we have for testing certainly seems to work well.

[mwillems]

That looks pretty cool.
The HiFiBerry Dac we have for testing certainly seems to work well.

It's definitely the most compact way to get sound out of conventional speakers.  The whole package isn't meaningfully larger than a normal pi case, although it obviously requires a more serious "power brick", but you can situate that outside of the speaker case for convenience.  I haven't measured heat buildup (i.e. I haven't tried putting one inside a sealed speaker), but they're definitely cool enough to run inside a vented speaker.

[JimH]

I like it.  Thanks.

[JimH]

There's a HiFiBerry Amp2:
https://www.hifiberry.com/shop/#boards

Is it a newer model of the same thing?

Thanks.

[mattkhan]

Looks like it is a newer model, higher power for one thing - https://www.hifiberry.com/blog/introducing-the-amp2-more-power-higher-sample-rates-more-affordable/amp/

[mwillems]

Yeah, that's the new higher power model; if I were buying today that's what I'd buy, but what I've actually got running in "production" are two amp+ units.  The amp+ have only one foible that I detected which is that if your powersupply is insufficient they can starve the Pi of power.  This isn't immediately obvious but happens when you turn up the volume    The answer obviously is to get an adequate power supply, or hard limit the volume.

One of the selling points of the Amp2 is that it (allegedly) does a better job of powering the pi itself allowing for more peripherals, so presumably it should also handle the "brown out" scenario more gracefully too.

[JimH]

Thanks.  I ordered a couple.

[DarkPenguin]

I love the hifiberry dac. 

[Hilton]

HifiBerry Amp2 is definitely the easiest. Onboard regulated power too which is nice.

Can I suggest an enclosure with a passive radiator to increase the bass output.
I really like peerless drivers and they have a great range of speakers and passive radiators.

A couple of good examples below to consider in the youtube videos.

https://www.parts-express.com/peerless-by-tymphany-830878-3-1-2-passive-radiator--264-1060

[JimH]

Yeah, that's the new higher power model; if I were buying today that's what I'd buy, but what I've actually got running in "production" are two amp+ units.  The amp+ have only one foible that I detected which is that if your powersupply is insufficient they can starve the Pi of power.  This isn't immediately obvious but happens when you turn up the volume    The answer obviously is to get an adequate power supply, or hard limit the volume.

One of the selling points of the Amp2 is that it (allegedly) does a better job of powering the pi itself allowing for more peripherals, so presumably it should also handle the "brown out" scenario more gracefully too.

The two we bought came in today and we had some fun testing.  The volume is fine in JRiver, not weak at all.  It converted a DSD file to PCM and it played fine.

We will do more testing next week.

[JimH]

Here's the HiFiBerry Amp2 board:



It plugs into a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B.  If the Id software is installed, it just plays.

The screws at the bottom connect to left and right speakers with speaker cable.

The power supply also powers the RPi.

Cost of the Amp2 boards is about $50.  The power supply is about $25.  Shipping from Switzerland to the U.S. was about $35 for two sets.  Total of about $90 each.

[JimH]

Here's a picture of the HiFiBerry Amp2 (top) plugged into the Raspberry Pi3 Model B (bottom).

[JimH]

We plugged it into a metered Z-Wave outlet this morning.

The whole rig draws very little power:

At idle:  about 3.5 watts

Playing audio at full volume on medium size table top speakers:  about 18 watts

The amp is rated at 60 watts total for the two stereo channels.

The speakers are wired directly to the HiFiBerry Amp2.

Pretty neat.

[mwillems]

We plugged it into a metered Z-Wave outlet this morning.

The whole rig draws very little power:

At idle:  about 3.5 watts

Playing audio at full volume on medium size table top speakers:  about 18 watts

The amp is rated at 60 watts total for the two stereo channels.

The speakers are wired directly to the HiFiBerry Amp2.

Pretty neat.

I'm glad you're liking them so far.  One thing that impressed me was how small the whole package was.  I have some smallish Class D amps, but even those are bigger than the Pi + Amp board option.  It's kind of surreal to be driving bookshelf speakers nice and loud from such a tiny box.  I brought one on vacation once with a set of speakers and everyone (even non-technical folks) were blown away that the amp and everything were so small.

You might be able to further reduce the power-draw at idle with some power tweaks to the pi (i.e. via powertop or tlp); it would appear that the vast majority of the draw is the pi itself not the amp: https://support.hifiberry.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115000012509-Ability-to-power-off-hifiberry-Amp-